Mobile Jobcentres are hitting the road in six new areas, allowing career advice to arrive outside a leisure centre before anyone has found the changing rooms.
The vans will visit supermarkets, community venues, football stadiums and other places where people already have reasons to be. Britain has decided that if people cannot reach the Jobcentre, the Jobcentre should learn to reverse park.
The expansion follows pilots in the Scottish Highlands, North and Mid Wales and Greater Manchester, where more than 1,600 people received support. The Department for Work and Pensions is now tripling the mobile fleet. Somewhere, a fleet manager has opened a map and realised that access to employment may depend on the quality of the nearest roundabout.
The six additional areas are in England and Wales, while the wider service will operate across nine areas in England, Scotland and Wales. The vans are intended to help people facing barriers to work, including health conditions and caring responsibilities. This is a serious service, although it is remarkable that reaching people required the state to discover the revolutionary concept of going there.
The Lawn’s Gary CV, encountered between the bread aisle and the reduced price biscuits, welcomed the arrangement. “It is very handy,” he said, laughing. “I can update my work history while comparing the price of own brand cereal.” His career adviser was apparently parked beside the trolleys, ready to discuss transferable skills and whether a loyalty card counts as workplace experience.
The scheme forms part of wider plans for a new national jobs and careers service. The programme is backed by £55 million and will also offer digital support. Britain is covering every angle: advice in a van, advice online and, if necessary, advice while someone queues for a pie.
The service is open to existing customers and other members of the public. More than half of those visiting the vans are not receiving benefits, suggesting that the operation is reaching people who might not visit a traditional Jobcentre. The state has therefore discovered that a public service becomes less alarming when it parks beside a supermarket and removes the architectural atmosphere of a building where hope goes to complete a form.
For now, Mobile Jobcentres are on the move. The nation’s careers have been asked to keep left, indicate early and bring a CV capable of surviving a sudden roundabout. At last, Britain has made employment support mobile, because apparently the final barrier to work was not the job market but finding somewhere legal to park the paperwork.
Source: Department for Work and Pensions.
